Marketing is the bane of most entrepreneurs existence. On one hand it is necessary to communicate with your potential customer base while on the other hand it can be an incredible time suck taking you away from the business of running your business. It needs to be done and as the business owner you are the ideal person to get potential customers the info they need, so what is the answer? I can name that tune in one note…Automation.

Marketing, Marketing, Will Robinson

Ok, so maybe Robbie the robot is not exactly the type of automation we are talking about here but a factory analogy is not too far off. Think about it, the key to marketing (once you have figured out your message and the best way to present it of course) is messaging consistently over time to your potential customer base. The problem that most entrepreneurs face is the same issue that plagued the manufacturing industry in years past, volume. And how did manufacturers resolve the issue? Automation. So why not apply a similar principle to your marketing efforts? I know I am not making an apples-to-apples comparison here but you get the idea. It is all about having the time to generate the appropriate volume whether it be physical product or marketing content. We have established that the key to marketing is the number of touches (and no, not bad touches) you make with a potential client over time but just because you want to connect with them on an ongoing basis does not mean that you have to come back next week at the same bat-time and same bat-channel to bang out more brilliant insights. It is hard enough for entrepreneurs to get into a marketing frame of mind for their own business (even if that is what they do for others) so why not maximize that time when lightning strikes and begin filling a crock pot with marketing gems so you can set it to cook slowly, releasing your brilliance as it heats over the course of an automated campaign?

Recipes for Success

Ok, now you are sold. You know you can count on one or two good days each quarter when you can not only concentrate on marketing your company but you are actually interested in doing it. You have the ingredients, now all that is left is to find the right appliance to turn your marketing recipe into the culinary masterpiece you know it to be. So what are the Consumer Reports best buys for automated marketing:

Blog
One of the easiest ways to automate your marketing efforts is through Scheduled blog posting.  Blog platforms often allow you to set a date and time for your postings to go live. WordPress is especially good at this. You can hack out 10 blog draft blog postings and then schedule them to go live at the date and time of your choosing. This allows you to sit down on that one day a quarter and get it all out, all of the industry innovations, customer epiphanies and other nuggets of brilliance related to your business that have been building up but you had not been able to release to the wild. Then once you have extracted every last drop of insight, you can go through and set your wisdom to a slow drip so its magic fingers will touch your clients as regularly as possible. So then you can get back to the business of running your business secure in the knowledge that even though you are not even thinking about marketing anymore, your clients are receiving the benefit of your experience. And once your marketing build up reaches a critical level again you can just rinse and repeat to reset the circle of life.

Email
Email can work in much the same way with the added benefit of your appliance restarting itself for each new subscription so each individual feels the magic fingers at the exact same rate and in the exact same order no matter when they turned on the heat. How does this miracle appliance work you ask? The simple answer is “AutoResponder”. Now I know what you are thinking, “hey, wait a minute, that is what I set when I go on vacation, how can that possible fulfill the promise that you have laid out?” But worry not, the name might be the same but the function is drastically different. Email providers like MailChimp, aWeber or even a more involved service like 1ShoppingCart allow you to set up serialized  autoresponders that run as a result of a subscription to a given email list. These autoresponders generally allow you to set up multiple emails as well as a time delay from the initial subscription so that they can be sent in the order you want them received and with the appropriate time delay between each so your touches can trickle out at the proper rate.

Social Media
Social Media content distribution can also be automated  as an additional prong in your email and/or blogging efforts. Most blogging platforms and email providers offer options for direct social media integration so as soon as your blast of radiance hits your blog or email system, the same information can be immediately distributed to your different social media outlets like Facebook, and Twitter allowing you to magnify your audience all while you are focusing your time on servicing existing customer and business needs.

The bottom line is that through small time commitments and simple automation, entrepreneurs can effectively market themselves without sacrificing the business they are trying to build in the process.

Everyone wants to bring more traffic to their website but the $64,000 question on every business owners mind can be summed up in a single word – How? Unfortunately when it comes to website traffic there are no perfect answers but outside of your standard search engine optimization (SEO) and link submission there are 3 easy ways to help increase traffic to your website.

1. Blogging – I have advocated business blogging for years for this very reason. One of the fundamental parts of search engine algorithms revolves around the freshness of content. And the way the spiders work is that the more often your content is updated, the more often they will come back to reindex your site. If you and your competition are on equal footing from a search engine placement standpoint then the site that is updated more often is going to reap the rewards of higher placement simply by natural attrition. With this in mind it is important to update your site as often as possible and the easiest way to do that is through blogging because it allows you to diverge from your normal marketing content and dive deeper into tertiary subjects related to your business or product offerings. And this divergence not only opens up a myriad of content topics but also adds another level of depth to your SEO footprint.
2. Email – Email marketing is another way to drive new traffic to your site while also being a catalyst for reengaging existing customers. Sending out regular updates such as a monthly newsletter keeps them coming back and offers opportunities to increase your reach through secondary exposure to your emails. To increase your numbers just add an opt-in form to your site (with the appropriate free gift to woo them into providing info). There are a number of programs available for sending mass emails as well as online services that can all help deal with email setup, sending and list management. I personally prefer MailChimp because of its outstanding Forever Free account that allows you to send to a list of up to 2000 subscribers, sending up to 12000 email a month at no change. This is a perfect solutions for entrepreneurs trying to build a list because it does not cost anything while you get it off the ground and once your list hits the tipping point you can stick with all of the tools you are used to and just pay as you go to keep the party going.
3. Social Media – Whether you are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any of the hundreds of other social media outlets to connect with clients and potential clients, they can all be used to drive traffic back to your site. You can even use the blogging and email marketing mentioned above to reinforce your social media activities. By making sure that you are posting often in your social media accounts with links back to your site or even if it is just to pass along a helpful article form a third party, it will increase your companies SEO footprint and ultimately drive people back to your site.

Other ways that you can increase traffic are through more old school means like print work (business cards and collateral materials that include your website). And when you absolutely positively need traffic overnight, you can always go with options like PPC (pay per click), paid blogging, banner placement and other paid services.

Putting in a little sweat equity with some of these easy steps (or actual capital in the case of the paid options) can go a long way toward building the kind of traffic your clearly awesome site deserves.

In order to be in business these days it is essential to use email but with that great tool sometimes comes great annoyance. SPAM is the bane of most business people’s existence but what exactly is SPAM? Well, you might not believe it but that question is a source of great debate. Many definitions have been bandied  about such as:

• Stupid, Pointless Annoying Message
• Sales Promotional Advertising Mail
• Simultaneously Posted Advertising Message
• Stupid Persons Advertising Mail

And though many of them go way back and all of them are accurate, the actual origination of the term is supposedly from a Monty Python sketch about a SPAM serving restaurant  in which vikings began chanting loudly about the canned meat every time it is mentioned. You can just hear it now, can’t you? (If not, Click here to listen in and you will never again look at email without hearing it).

Everyone hates SPAM, even Hormel hates it (not the canned kind, they love that) and an entire industry has grown up around preventing people from having to see it. So now that you know why it is called what it is called, the big question that remains (especially for marketers) is “How do I keep my messages from getting caught up in those wonderful filters?”. Well, the answer to that can be very complicated because there is no set answer. The parameters of every SPAM filter is set by the person in charge of setting it up on that particular network. Most filters work on a point system. They set values for different types of content and then set a threshold to determine what is good and what is bad. Once your message hits the set limit, its down the bad egg shoot you go. Some IT people may really hate SPAM and set the tolerance of the filters to be very low to catch anything that could potentially offend pristine inboxes while others might be a bit more liberal with what gets through.  The only thing you can really do to stay out of that dreaded dog catchers net is to try to mitigate the damage by employing a few basic best practices:

1. Don’t use spammy phrases that scream sales email like “Click Here Now!”, or “GREAT SAVINGS”. SPAM filters don’t like you to be to “salesy”
2. Lay off the exclamation points!!!!!! Let your content speak for itself, there is no need to beat them over the head with it.
3. Avoid USING ALL CAPS or “yelling” (especially in the subject), SPAM bots hate that.
4. Tone it down and don’t use bright red, or green fonts. I know you want to get their attention but there is no need to be rude and SPAM filters get offended easily, Major.
5. Send real content! Sending something that’s all images with little or no text is a huge red flag because spam filters can’t read images. They get a bit put out and may assume you’re a spammer.

Sloppy code like that generated from a program like Microsoft Word is also a dead giveaway. There are a large number of decent free or low-cost WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editors out there, find one that works for you or bite the bullet and hire a professional to build your email for you and avoid the mess altogether.

These tips are no guarantee that your email will not end up on the block and there are a great many other things that you can do to try to mitigate your risk but with a little effort (and a lot of marketing self control) you can help ensure that the email man does not have to ring twice.

Most small businesses ebb and flow with the seasons and summer more often than not is one of those slower times. The kids are out of school, vacations loom and clients are slower to respond even when they are very anxious to get something completed. During these times it is important not to lose focus. Don’t get me wrong, you deserve a break and should take some time to smell the roses but think of how much easier your life will be the rest of the year of you take a little of this time surplus and apply it to some of the housekeeping things you have been forced to ignore? So what can you do now that will make your life easier the rest of the year?

1. Editorial Calendar
   As you know, regular site/social media updates are the cornerstone of any SEO success. I know you have your blog setup and have been dazzling everyone with the shininess of the pearls you have been putting on display but how much easier would it be for you if you had a calendar to rely on for your blogging, newsletter, social media and website update topics? Take some of the extra time you find yourself with this summer and rather than spending it trying to beat your old paddle-ball record, use it to sit down and come up with an outline of topics to get you though the rest of the year.
2. Design updates
   If you are thinking about making updates to your identity in the form of design changes for your logo, website, collateral materials or social media themes, now is the time to put those thoughts into action. If you have plans for a new media blitz in the fall, you don’t want to lose valuable time going through a design process when you could already be reaping the rewards. Get the things you need done in process during your slow times so you can take as much time as you need to make sure any graphical updates are exactly what you want rather than rushing the process and accepting an inferior product because your are in a hurry to get things out the door.
3. Blogging
   Now that you have your editorial calendar, why not take a little of this time to go ahead and bang out some of those posts? If you are using something like WordPress for your blog, you can go in and write as many posts as you like and schedule them to go live over time. How great would that be to be going into fall with posts queued up to run at regular intervals without a thought. Just fill up that marketing crock pot and let it run. And who knows, you might find some other marketing uses for your brilliant prose along the way.

Summer is finally here but fall is right around the corner so make sure to make the most of your summer and smooth out some of the business wrinkles for the rest of the year.

Marketing is the bane of most entrepreneurs existence. On one hand it is necessary to communicate with your potential customer base while on the other hand it can be an incredible time suck taking you away from the business of running your business. It needs to be done and as the business owner you are the ideal person to get potential customers the info they need, so what is the answer? I can name that tune in one note…Automation.

Marketing, Marketing, Will Robinson

Ok, so maybe Robbie the robot is not exactly the type of automation we are talking about here but a factory analogy is not too far off. Think about it, the key to marketing (once you have figured out your message and the best way to present it of course) is messaging consistently over time to your potential customer base. The problem that most entrepreneurs face is the same issue that plagued the manufacturing industry in years past, volume. And how did manufacturers resolve the issue? Automation. So why not apply a similar principle to your marketing efforts? I know I am not making an apples-to-apples comparison here but you get the idea. It is all about having the time to generate the appropriate volume whether it be physical product or marketing content. We have established that the key to marketing is the number of touches (and no, not bad touches) you make with a potential client over time but just because you want to connect with them on an ongoing basis does not mean that you have to come back next week at the same bat-time and same bat-channel to bang out more brilliant insights. It is hard enough for entrepreneurs to get into a marketing frame of mind for their own business (even if that is what they do for others) so why not maximize that time when lightning strikes and begin filling a crock pot with marketing gems so you can set it to cook slowly, releasing your brilliance as it heats over the course of an automated campaign?

Recipes for Success

Ok, now you are sold. You know you can count on one or two good days each quarter when you can not only concentrate on marketing your company but you are actually interested in doing it. You have the ingredients, now all that is left is to find the right appliance to turn your marketing recipe into the culinary masterpiece you know it to be. So what are the Consumer Reports best buys for automated marketing:

Blog
One of the easiest ways to automate your marketing efforts is through Scheduled blog posting.  Blog platforms often allow you to set a date and time for your postings to go live. WordPress is especially good at this. You can hack out 10 blog draft blog postings and then schedule them to go live at the date and time of your choosing. This allows you to sit down on that one day a quarter and get it all out, all of the industry innovations, customer epiphanies and other nuggets of brilliance related to your business that have been building up but you had not been able to release to the wild. Then once you have extracted every last drop of insight, you can go through and set your wisdom to a slow drip so its magic fingers will touch your clients as regularly as possible. So then you can get back to the business of running your business secure in the knowledge that even though you are not even thinking about marketing anymore, your clients are receiving the benefit of your experience. And once your marketing build up reaches a critical level again you can just rinse and repeat to reset the circle of life.

Email
Email can work in much the same way with the added benefit of your appliance restarting itself for each new subscription so each individual feels the magic fingers at the exact same rate and in the exact same order no matter when they turned on the heat. How does this miracle appliance work you ask? The simple answer is “AutoResponder”. Now I know what you are thinking, “hey, wait a minute, that is what I set when I go on vacation, how can that possible fulfill the promise that you have laid out?” But worry not, the name might be the same but the function is drastically different. Email providers like MailChimp, aWeber or even a more involved service like 1ShoppingCart allow you to set up serialized  autoresponders that run as a result of a subscription to a given email list. These autoresponders generally allow you to set up multiple emails as well as a time delay from the initial subscription so that they can be sent in the order you want them received and with the appropriate time delay between each so your touches can trickle out at the proper rate.

Social Media
Social Media content distribution can also be automated  as an additional prong in your email and/or blogging efforts. Most blogging platforms and email providers offer options for direct social media integration so as soon as your blast of radiance hits your blog or email system, the same information can be immediately distributed to your different social media outlets like Facebook, and Twitter allowing you to magnify your audience all while you are focusing your time on servicing existing customer and business needs.

The bottom line is that through small time commitments and simple automation, entrepreneurs can effectively market themselves without sacrificing the business they are trying to build in the process.

By now you have probably been exposed to the latest in marketing technology although you might not have been aware of what you were seeing. What am I talking about, you ask? Well, have you seen this strange black and white squares that have been popping up at the grocery store, on cutting edge marketing materials and sometimes even on TV recently? I thought so.

What are they you ask? They are known as QR Codes or Quick Response Codes. And those seemingly innocuous squares carry hidden meaning to those in-the-know and anyone with a smart phone can become part of the “in” crowd with the click of a camera shutter.

********* Warning useless digression approaching **********

To the uninitiated they are simply the next generation of bar code but to really understand how they developed and how they can help you, we need to get Mr. Peabody to fire up the Way-back Machine (and leave Sherman behind this time).

The concept behind the QR Code actually originated back in the 90’s and at that time special information was being encoded using a somewhat standard product bar codes but it required a special device called a CueCat to access the special information. This was problematic because the CueCat had to be attached to your computer to work and at that time your average home computer was somewhat less than mobile. So what did you have to do? You had to buy products (sometimes they were even used in magazine ads), bring them to your computer and make a concerted effort to find the Easter egg (if it eggisted at all). The devices were even given away in some places in order to promote the use of this new marketing technology. Needless to say, I am probably the only one left that remembers them because they were such a dismal failure. Another product of technology not being able to keep up with itself.

Fast forward to present day where everyone you meet has a smart phone that is 10x more powerful than the Gargoyle you were attaching your CueCat to back in the day (which was a Wednesday as I recall). Not only that but you would be hard pressed to find a regular cell phone that did not have a built-in camera now. Finally technology has caught up to the brilliant idea.

Digression complete, you may now return to your regularly scheduled posting

So how can you make the most of this technology that has finally come into its own? Well, as is usual with most really broad questions, it all depends. Everyone can make use of these lovely little squares of wonder, you just have to decide what you want to do. Unlike the CueCat enabled codes of the past, QR codes can reveal much more than just a URL. With a QR Code you can encode:

1. A URL. This is the most common use. Whether for a website proper, a product micro site or a social media page you can get users looking at what you have to offer right from their phone anywhere and anytime they encounter your square of destiny.
2. A secret message. Yep, the next generation of invisible ink is here and there are no special pens required. Send a special message for people “In the Know”, provide a special offer for those with the ability to find it or maybe pass on a special code to accessing special content about your products or services.
3. An SMS. Yes, you heard me right. you can encode a phone number and message into your magic block so that you no longer have to say “Text 2323 to 900-555-1212” to get your special prize. People can just point and click their way to entering your contest.
4. A Phone Number. Most smart phones are designed to turn any number that even remotely resembles a phone number into a link that can be dialed with the single click. This type of QR Code take it one step further and does not require that you even have the number. Just scan to get the number and click to connect. Now THAT is Quick Response.
5. Your Contact Info. The easiest way to get your contact info to a prospect. They scan the code and a new contact is automatically setup with your Name, Address, Phone and Email. What could be easier. These are great for business cards. Who needs a special card scanner when a quick click with your phone does it all and allows you to call NOW, not in 3 days when you get around to scanning the card back at the office.
6. An Email. Depending on how their phone functions, you can even queue up an email with a click that will populate the email address it is going to, the subject line and the body. The best email based contest entry vehicle even. People walking by your both at a trade show and click to enter rather than stopping to fill out a form that you might not be able to read anyway.
7. Your Geographical Information. Map it, Baby! Can you imagine having your office location encoded so that with a click it opens up a smart phone mapping program and plants a flag at your location so that it is quick and easy for people to get to you?

So, I guess now the question becomes not “How can I use it?”, but “How Can I get my own code?”. Well, that is easy too. There are a number of places online that will allow you generate your own codes for FREE. You just put in the info you want encoded, click a button and presto your code appears ready for download in a format that can be used in print or on the web. In fact you can even find one right here. Just look at the resources menu above and click the “QR Code Generator” link – or anywhere it is linked (like here) in the body if you are super lazy.

So what are you waiting for an engraved invitation? The only limitation for using QR Codes is your own imagination. So get out there and get your own magic square now!

Every entrepreneur wants to build their business but most new businesses have to be very lean in order to get off the ground. Unfortunately for most businesses that means doing without key things that can help their business thrive but that does not have to be the case. Just because you do not have the specific skills needed for a task and you cannot afford to have a full or even part-time employee around to get the things done that you need does not mean that you have to do without. There are inexpensive options available to give you the help you need so you can focus more on the business of building your business.

Picture it, your office, now. You, focusing on meeting your clients needs while your daily office/business needs are effortlessly handled by an unseen force? It is an amazing feeling right? You, focusing on the stuff that made you want to start your own business in the first place, not a care in the world. Sound too good to be true? What could this amazing unseen force be? It is none other than your Virtual Assistant. That’s right, your heard me…Virtual. And I am not talking about The H.A.L 9000 or some scary SkyNet kind of thing that will take your data in a desperate plot to take over the world. I am talking about highly skilled professionals working from home that can remotely help your back office run at peak efficiency.

Think about it like hiring a temp from an agency but rather than getting basic computer skills and the task for providing office space and equipment, you get someone with experience doing exactly what you need done who provides their own equipment and can help you at just about any hour of the day (within reason of course). You can find VA’s with skills that run the gamut from very broad skill sets to help you take care of stuff that piles up and keeps you from getting to more important things to very narrow specializations to help you with more of a surgical focus and everything in-between.

Need someone to answer the phones so you can get out for a few hours a day unencumbered?
No problem. There are many ways in which your local business calls can be routed to a VA so they make appointments, take messages or anything else you require.

Perhaps you have great marketing ideas and have no clue hoe to implement them?
That’s not a problem either. You can find marketing writers to help with your website and other marketing content.

Does Social Networking completely elude you?
You are covered there too with social media experts who can not only get you setup with the likes of Facebook and Twitter but will also keep it updated for you to keep your presence fresh.

Bookkeeping not really your bag, baby?
You can find a VA to handle your payables and receivables to ensure that you are always in good standing with your vendors while making sure that your clients are in good standing with you.

Web Guys getting you down?
You can even find someone to make your website updates for you so you don’t have to pay outrageous maintenance costs to unscrupulous web developers.

And instead of paying for someone 25-40 hours a week, you only pay for the time you use and the rates are very reasonable. So what all can you get? The sky’s the limit. If there is a need, chances are the is a VA out the that is specializing in easing that pain.

• General Office Assistance
• Calendar Management
• Bookkeeping
• Travel
• Research
• Document Maintenance
• Business Writing
• Marketing Writing
• Blog Writing
• Webinars / Teleseminars
• Email Newsletters
• Website Maintenance
• Social Media
• Search Engine Optimization

And the list goes on. If you need it done, chances are there is someone out there with the expertise you need, ready to help.

So what are you waiting for? You can get exactly the help you need without the unnecessary overhead so have a seat at the table, tuck in and help your business grow.

Many business owners new and old ponder the age-old question of how to build and expand an email list for their online marketing efforts. While the question of building a list is important, the more important thing to consider out of the box is how to maintain it once it inevitably reaches critical mass (what can I say, I am more of glass is too big kind of guy).

Now some people like to stick with the old capture an email one at a time and maintain the list offline is something high-tech like a spreadsheet way of doing things. This is very time-consuming and leaves you open to all sorts of human error issues from forgetting to add a name to the list all the way to forgetting to unsubscribe someone. Others may  have a custom application that captures the information in a database to try to keep the issues at a minimum and lessen the time it takes each month to maintain their list but this way still requires you to handle subscribes and unsubscribes somewhat manually.

All this time spent maintaining your email list can defeat the purpose of having one in the first place because rather than being able to concentrate on your business and making your clients aware of the latest and greatest, you are spending all of that quality marketing time (that could be spent on developing your promotion or enhancing your product) on making sure that the little old lady in Pasadena (who may not even get to her email for days at a time) is receiving your less than well thought out message. So what is the answer? When in doubt go to the professionals!

As I have stated in previous posts, a veritable gaggle of reasonable priced companies have popped up to fill this void. Now I know what you are thinking,”Why would I have a company do nothing but maintain my list?” and the simple answer is that you wouldn’t. The companies I am talking about specialize in email delivery but they offer this business saving service FREE as a part of using their service. And small businesses can easily find FREE Trials (like AWeber, VerticalResponse, and GetResponse for example) and depending on your list size and mailing requirements FREE forever (like my personal favorite MailChimp).

So seriously, how can they help?

1. Well, to start they will allow you to import your existing list so you breathe a little easier.
2. Then they provide you with a form you can place on your website to use for capturing email information. This is key because information submitted here goes right to your list and if you have more than one, that can be delineated as well to make sure that people who wanted to hear more about your great Green Bean Casserole recipe can be separated from those interested in your 14 ways to deal with household insect incursions.
3. Once people are subscribed they can be sent a verification email so you can be doubly sure that they wanted to receive email from you and are not just the innocent victim of a vindictive co-worker who knows they have an irrational fear of overcooked legumes and singed them up for your casserole recipe list as a way to get back at them for not sharing their Shamrock shake…but I digress.
4. And in the event that they intended to subscribe but your recipes somehow remind them too much of their dearly departed aunt Flo (the Green Bean Casserole Queen of Tallulah Falls), they can use a link provided to unsubscribe from your list.

With all of this functionality at your finger tips, you are now no longer a slave to the innumerable changes to your list each month. Now you can focus on the business of marketing your products/services secure in the knowledge that the list you use to disseminate your pearls of business brilliance is the best list it can be each and every time you setup a new campaign. And who knows, with all this extra time you may want to start another list or two with which to dazzle the masses with your new-found love for croquet mallets.

One of the most popular methods of building an email marketing database is through subscriptions to an email newsletter. They are a great way to connect with new potential customers but how do you get started with one? Once the decision is made, you can get things going in pretty short order, but as with most things you need a good recipe to get things just right. And the best way to ensure a tasty dish, as I may have mentioned in previous posts, is to think it through before you start. So whats to think about, right? You want to increase your email database and what you have to say is definitely monumentally important to anyone with half a brain so you should just make it happen, right? Well, not necessarily. If you take a little time to think it through before you start, you can make your first endeavor into the world of email marketing a much more successful one.

So let’s think it through a bit:

Purpose:
I know you want ti increase your email database, but is that the only purpose behind your need to shower unsuspecting readers with your thought-provoking prose? Think about your ultimate goal in adding to your email database. Is it to drive traffic to your website, increase sales for specific products, interest potential attendees in upcoming events or to simply a way to stay connected with your client base by informing them of what is new and happening with your company?

Content:
What type of content do you want to present? Just because you have a good idea for an article or two in the inaugural issue does not mean your newsletter will have legs. Make sure that the concept behind the newsletter is scalable enough to include as yet undetermined topics for your concept. You don’t want to develop a newsletter entirely around the “pitfalls of baking 3″ diameter apple tarts during the winter solstice” when a slightly broader topic like “3” tarts” will allow you the fluidity needed to keep your readers interested with a broader range of topics throughout the year.

Format:
How do you want your newsletter to be read? It seems like a simple enough questions but it is one that can have a great impact on how your particular brand of literary brilliance is received. There are a number of ways to format a newsletter, all of which are good, but what works best for you is entirely dependent on the content you plan to provide. The two most common types are the All-in-one and the click-through.

All-In-One
The all-in-one type brings all of the content of the newsletter right to your subscribers inbox. They allow the subscriber to easily digest the information for quick action.These work very well for company announcements, affiliate sales and newsletters with fewer articles or shorter content. The advantage of these is they are entirely encapsulated so they are easy to read on the go with various wireless devices.

Click through
The click-through type of newsletter is one that provides a summary of each article with a link to continue reading. This type of newsletter generally has both an email and website component It is more suited to newsletters with a great deal of technical content, a large numbers of topics or longer more in-depth articles. Although it can be more time-consuming to maintain, this type of newsletter allows for additional benefits outside of simply bolstering your email database. With this type of newsletter you are driving traffic to your website with each click and once they are finished reading your newsletter, they might decide to stick around and see what else you have to offer at that moment in time. It also allows for the possibility of both broad and targeted advertising based on topic rather than just the broad type of advertising that the all-in-one might deliver.

Now that you have done your due diligence: you know your purpose, you have a scalable idea for ongoing content and your format is set, it is time to get busy. Your next steps are to come up with a catchy title, some awesome design and a way to make it go.

Catchy title – Check! Forget the marketing angle, the brilliant name you came up with is probably the whole reason you decided to do the newsletter in the first place, right? 🙂

Awesome design – Check! You know a kick’n designer that can make that brilliant title sing. All you have to do is give him the name and the next great content vehicle is as good as done! And if you don’t think you need the next great design, that is not a problem either because there are ways of making your newsletter talk even if it in NOT one of the pretty people.

Way to make it go – Uh, oh! How do I do that? Well lucky for you this ain’t your mama’s content distribution method. There are a great many ways to give your vehicle wings and none of them require jet fuel. If you don’t have a bunch of technology black belts lying around just waiting for you to come in with your next flash to brilliance then you will want to consider using a third-party email provider to deliver your newsletter and more importantly maintain your email database.

There are an ever-increasing number of providers out there to suite this need and the one you go with depends a lot on you. Most have tools and templates for creating simple HTML newsletters (in case you do not feel the need for design ecstasy in your template) but all will help you manage your list. You can find solutions to fit anything from a large enterprise implementations that service lists in the hundreds of thousands (like YesMail, Silverpop and ExactTarget) all the way down to lists of less than a hundred. The trick is to read the features available for the cost and decide what works best for your list and mailing needs. Small businesses can easily find FREE Trials (like AWeber, VerticalResponse, and GetResponse for example) and depending on your list size and mailing requirements FREE forever (like my personal favorite MailChimp). Functionality varies from service to service but they all do a good job of helping you get your word out.

The best part of hosted services is the list maintenance. They allow you to set up your list with boning or preloaded with an existing database. From there they provide you with ways to create subscribe forms that can be used in your online marketing efforts, auto responders that can be used to carry a link to a free gift and all the while they handle any unsubscribes that come through to make sure that you stay CAN-SPAM compliant.

After the due diligence for your new newsletter us done, make sure to check out some of these email providers to see what works best for you needs:

• AWeber
• VerticalResponse
• GetResponse
• MyEmma
• MailChimp
• YesMail
• Silverpop
• ExactTarget